If you want to see the classic depiction of FBI agents, watch The Americans. Straight shooters, totally committed to defending the interests of the US against Soviet spies within the US. Dedicated public servants. Even those guys could bend the rules a little bit, but only for the greater good, not in service of evil corrupt politicians. I like to believe that’s how it was then, in the 1980s. I think the corruption of the FBI began under Clinton, but couldn’t happen overnight. 500 FBI files (how many more were not accidentally found), Waco, TWA 800, those things could not have been pulled off unless the FBI was compromised, at the upper levels. That kind of things radiates down in concentric circles. Mueller, Comey and McCabe rose in that era.
Bush 2 seems to have made a deal with the devil where he let the FBI remain corrupt and didn’t do things like pursue the Clintons (which might have resulted in charges against Bush 1 since they all had skeletons, and the Clintons knew where they were). He was told by the DS to expand the intelligence apparatus against the American people and he did it. The stage was set for Zero, who took all that and ran with it.
FBI now needs to be gutted, it is beyond hope, mainly because we don’t know who we can trust after 26 years of corrupt leadership. The vast majority of agents are people who came up through the FBI in this corrupt system, instead of the FBI that existed in the 1980s. I like the idea that has been floated of folding the FBI into other law enforcement agencies. Part can go to the US marshals, the spying part can go into DHS, and so on. One central, all powerful investigative entity is too dangerous for a free republic.
I like your ideas. I have watched The Americans - love that program - having grown up then and seeing events through the lens of the cold war, knowing what we know now. Interestingly though, and perhaps pertinent, that show was based on a case that was discovered in 2010, which included Anna Chapman, the hot spy.